Sunlight, thick and golden, filtered through a cathedral ceiling of emerald leaves. The air hung warm and moist, rich with the scent of damp earth, blooming orchids, and decay. It was a serene, almost sacred silence, broken only by the rustle of leaves on the tree's branches and in the distant, gentle drip of water from a previous night's rain. A beam of light caught the gossamer threads of a spider web, turning it into a net of captured diamonds. Peace, deep and ancient, settled over this lush, green world.

  *SCREEEEEEE* .

  But not for long .

  A monstrous, guttural screech tore through the tranquility, a sound of animalistic fury that erupted from the forest's depths. It was immediately followed by a thunderous, chaotic rhythm—THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP—the sound of countless heavy feet pounding the soft earth, shaking the ferns and sending frightened birds exploding into the sky.

  From a wall of tangled vines and giant ferns, a young man burst forth in a scrambling dive. He was of modest height, perhaps 5'5", with a lean, well-toned frame built for endurance rather than strength. His face, slightly squarish with symmetrical features currently twisted in panic, he was flushed red with effort. Sweat plastering his simple, short-cut smoky black hair to his forehead. His most striking feature, even in his terror, were his eyes—a rich, deep brown colour so intense they looked like pools of spilled ink in the dim forest light, now wide with raw fear.

  He ran with everything he had, his boots churning the soft loam, arms pumping wildly as he hurdled a mossy log. His breath came in ragged, huffing gasps that burned his throat, each exhale a white puff in the cool, moist air. He dared a glance over his shoulder, and his ink-dark eyes widened further.

  The source of the cacophony erupted from the foliage behind him. Not one, but three nightmarish simian creatures gave chase. They were all corded in muscle and matted, rust-colored fur, moving on Thier knuckles and feet with terrifying, ground-eating speed. Their faces were twisted masks of rage, with oversized, yellowed fangs pertrouding out of Thier mouths and beady black eyes fixed on their fleeing prey. The lead beast let out another ear-splitting shriek, saliva flying from its maw. They were closing the distance, their powerful limbs propelling them through the undergrowth with an ease the young man, for all his effort, could not match.

  The young man harnessed every fibre of his being and every drop of stamina he had to escape his pursuers, but to no avail. It wasn't long until the beasts were upon him. Once within range, the leader of the pack leapt a mighty leap, opening its maw wide and attempting to bite the young man's head in its entirety.

  Despite that happening, the young man didn't dare to turn around to realise the danger he was in, nor did he need to. He could feel the heat of the beast's breath on his neck, and that alone was enough for him to know that he was done for.

  In that moment of life or death, time seemed to come to a crawl, with everything slowing down to a snail's pace from the young man's point of view—except for his own thoughts. Of course, time itself didn't actually slow down, but the adrenaline rush the young man was experiencing sure made it seem so.

  Suspended in that single moment of peril, the young man's thoughts, fast as they were, couldn't help but spiral into a single thought

  How.... did it come to this? the young man asked, the tone in his mind neither scared nor desperate, just reminiscing, as if genuinely wanting to know where it had all went wrong.

  And as if answering his own question, the young man's thoughts suddenly began to rewind back through his own memories.

  Seeing your own life flash before your eyes is never a good sign, but in his situation, who could blame him ? And so, the young man began to remember, taking this story right back from the beginning.

  The memories crystallized, not as a personal recollection just yet, but as foundational history, lessons drilled into him since youth.

  It all started at the dawn of the third millennium. Humanity, a much more advanced but still an ambitious species, was trying to develop teleportation technology. A grand project to conquer distance and explore further into the unknown.

  It wasn't long until they realized that was a big mistake.

  No one was clear on the details of how it happened exactly, but it seemed that as a reaction to meddling with the fabric of reality, the human world was… assimilated. It was spliced, woven into a great network of interdimensional passageways linking countless realms together. This cosmic lattice, this root-and-branch system of worlds, was later dubbed Yggdrasil.

  In a bitterly ironic way, humanity had succeeded in its goal. Yggdrasil allowed instantaneous travel to other realms. But not as they would have liked. For they soon realized with dawning horror that the doors swung both ways. The same pathways that allowed them to visit other realms worked vice versa.

  This terrifying realization came in the form of a cataclysm ,an invasion. Monstrous creatures, later called Catalyst Beasts, poured through the newly opened gates. They were followed by other, stranger alien races—too varied, too alien to put under a single name. All came from the realms beyond, drawn to the new nexus, or perhaps simply expanding into it.

  What ensued was a great chaotic era. Humanity had to adapt overnight to the new threats Yggdrasil had unleashed upon their world. Many centuries of bloody, grinding war followed. Cities fell, nations were erased, and the very geography of the world was scarred. But, through stubbornness, ingenuity, and sheer numbers, humanity managed to prevail, securing their home realm—now just one node in an infinite network.

  But they didn't dare stop there. The threats from the realms beyond remained a perpetual one. So, out of both defensive need and burning curiosity, humanity began its own incursions into the outer realms, turning from a besieged fortress into a cautious, then ambitious, exploring force.

  A few more centuries passed before humanity had a solid footing in the outer realms. During that time, a lot had happened. They accomplished many victories and suffered many defeats. They made countless new enemies, and a handful of vital alliances. They demolished old social and political systems, establishing new ones built on martial law, frontier codes, and dimensional economics. They lost many of their old technological advantages—some machines simply failed in certain realms, physics itself being a local ordinance—but in return, they accomplished new powers and abilities. The greatest of these was the ability to tame and control the very Beasts that had once sought to exterminate them. This gave rise to the most respected and dangerous profession of the new age, Beast Catalysers.

  Skipping forward many years later, specifically to the year 3763.

  That’s where the young man’s story truly begins. His name was Onyx R. Bennett—the R standing for Reed—brother to Lux and Opal R. Bennett, all children to Dan Bennett and Pearl Reed.

  Dan and Pearl were both successful Beast Catalysers, a proud lineage they would have passed to their children, had fate not been so cruel. Both parents passed away under mysterious circumstances while exploring a newly discovered realm, leaving the triplets of Onyx and his siblings orphaned from a very young age.

  Luckily, Dan and Pearl had prepared for the worst. And had long made arrangements to take care of their children in case of their untimely demise—a common practice amongst those in their perilous profession.

  For Lux and Opal, they arranged for them to be adopted into a prestigious house each. They knew their two children possessed great potential as Beast Catalysers, ensuring those great houses wouldn’t refuse taking them under their wings. This ultimately separated the siblings, but secured for each a bright and privileged future in return.

  That left Onyx—who, sadly, was the runt of the litter. His potential was shallow, faint and pale compared to the brilliant flares of his siblings. His parents couldn't do for him what they did for them . They could only ensure all his basic needs would be covered, and leave him a modest inheritance which he received once he came of age. But despite their best efforts and wishes, Onyx ultimately had to have it harder than his siblings.

  But despite all the hardship, Onyx still grew up into a spirited young man, albeit a reclusive one. Growing up alone does that to a person.

  Naturally, Onyx chose to follow the path of a Beast Catalyser. His reason for that was a mix of personal ambition and a desire to rise in the world so he could one day reunite with his siblings. He figured that was what his parents would have wanted .

  And so, after years of rigorous preparation, graduating from his academy and receiving his first, Catalyst Beast ,Onyx didn't waste any time. And The moment his credentials were certified, he entered an outer realm.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  There were seven realms directly connected to Earth, the first humanity had explored and conquered. Over time, five of these realms after having their major threats systematically purged or pacified, were turned into nursery realms where rookies could cut their teeth.

  Out of the five nursery realms, Onyx chose one called Whisperwood as his starting ground. It was a common choice for those with little background.

  Onyx entering Whisperwood through the spatial root connected from Earth would first find himself at a station called North Star.

  In an outer realm, stations are usually built around the spatial roots they had, at least one station per root, that way humans can secure all entry and exit points to a realm, making occupying and controlling it easier.

  North Star Station was the station built around the root directly connecting this realm to Earth, so it was only natural it would be Onyx's first stop in this realm. Still, it wasn't quite his destination.

  Onyx had to travel to the Grey Wood Station, located west from the North Star Station. He had thought this through. North Star, as the primary gateway, was notoriously overcrowded with rookies, all scrambling for the same basic resources and meager opportunities. The competition would be fierce, and his shallow potential would put him at a disadvantage. He reasoned that moving quickly to a secondary station like Grey Wood would offer less competition, a chance to find his footing without being immediately overshadowed by hundreds of others just like him.

  Usually, newcomers don't immediately start traveling across a realm when they first start out. They usually orbit the entery station of Thier realm for several months first, gaining strength and experience before attempting long distance travels.

  But Onyx wanted to start his development as soon as possible, so he did some inquiring and found a caravan of senior Beast Catalysers heading west. Onyx had to pay a fee to convince the caravan to escort him with them, but regardless, Onyx found a way to reach his destination safely.

  Or at least, that how it should have been.

  Everything was fine for the first two halves of the journey. But at the final juncture, something happened that derailed everything. Onyx wasn't sure what it was exactly—something about someone finding a rare Beast. Whatever it was, it caused the entire caravan to go off course, with everyone suddenly running off to find that rare beast or something, completely forgetting about Onyx and leaving him stranded.

  Onyx could have waited for the ruckus to die down and for the caravan to reform and get back on track, but he was impatient and decided to try to finish the last leg of the journey on his own. After all, he was only half a day's distance away from his goal.

  But looking back at it now, it was clear that was where Onyx messed up, overestimating himself and forgetting that he couldn't defend himself in case he encountered danger.

  And danger he encountered Indeed. As he was making his way through the forest, he accidentally stumbled into the territory of a pack of ape beasts. Since he couldn't defend himself, Onyx could only run away. And after a harrowing pursuit through the forests, we finally circle back to the present moment.

  In the crystalline slowness of his adrenaline rush, the memory of his error was now bitterly clear." Ah", he thought, the realization cold and sharp." I see my mistake now". However That knowledge was useless at the moment.

  So , onyx decided to not spend his final moments on regret. His mind, operating at a frantic pitch, scrambled for a solution—any solution. His ink-dark eyes, wide with terror, darted across the slowed scene. The beast's jagged teeth, the spray of saliva, the moss on the trees, the—

  There. Just at the edge of his vision, half-hidden by a veil of ferns. A darkness in the earth. A split in the forest floor.

  The beast's jaw, vast as a cave, began to snap shut.

  Onyx didn't think. He moved. He dropped his weight, ducking his head so low his chin scraped his chest. The air above him was displaced with a sickening clack as massive fangs snapped together on empty space. He didn't stop to celebrate his narrow escape. Using his forward momentum, he threw himself into a tumbling roll straight toward the dark fissure.

  He hit the edge and plummeted.

  The world became a violent rush of scraping roots, crumbling soil, and sudden, jarring impact. He landed in a heap at the bottom of a narrow earth crevice, perhaps seven feet deep. The wind was knocked from his lungs, and pain flared in his shoulder. Above, the lead ape-beast's furious snarl echoed down the hole, a muzzle full of sharp teeth blocking the circle of dim light.

  The beasts couldn't fit, but they could reach. Powerful, clawed arms shot down, swiping frantically. Dirt rained as they began to dig at the edges, their furious scratching a promise of a slow, gruesome excavation.

  Onyx scrambled back, pressing himself against the cool earth wall. He couldn't just wait. He had to create distance.

  With a gasp, he focused inward, then with a pulse of will, he called forth. In a shimmer of displaced air beside him, his Catalyst Beast appeared.

  It was a Grup, a creature about the size of a pumpkin. Its body was a segmented sphere of milky brown flesh, supported by six short legs. Its face was a blunt, armored wedge. It chirped once, a sound of anxious confusion.

  "Dig!" Onyx croaked, the command raw with panic. "Down and away! Now!"

  The Grup didn't need telling twice. It sensed the danger from above. With a frantic, whirring motion, its legs became a blur. It pressed its wedge-head against the soft wall of the crevice and began to excavate with astonishing speed, throwing a shower of damp soil and small rocks behind it. Onyx crawled into the newly dug tunnel after it, the world shrinking to the smell of wet earth, the sound of scraping chitin, and the fading, enraged snarls from above.

  The ape-beasts scratched and snarled for what felt like an eternity, but the Grup was a creature born for this. It dug a narrow, descending passage, putting precious yards of solid earth between them and the opening. The sounds of the pack grew muffled, then distant. Finally, they stopped altogether.

  In the absolute, pressurized darkness, Onyx lay still, his breath the only loud sound. He waited for hours, listening for any scrape above. The Grup, exhausted, settled against his side, its soft body cool and reassuring. Only when the silence had been complete for a long, long time did onyx dare to think of moving.

  It took several more hours of cautious listening before he felt a sliver of safety. With a weary command, he directed the Grup to carefully dig an angled path back up, aiming for a spot far from the original crevice. He emerged, filthy and trembling, into the deep twilight of Whisperwood. The forest was serene once more.

  Onyx surveyed his surroundings with a paranoid, meticulous thoroughness. He waited in the mouth of his tunnel until his eyes adjusted to the twilight, listening for any rustle, any crack of a branch that wasn't the settling forest. Only when he was certain that no immediate danger lurked by, did he dare to creep out.

  After a few shaky steps on legs that felt like water, he steeled himself once more. Staying put in the open would do him no good so he had to move. Gritting his teeth against the ache in his shoulder, he began the difficult task of retracing his panicked flight to find his way back to his original destination.

  Doing so was brutally hard in the dark. But Onyx, in his studie years, had learned about more than just beasts . He recalled some navigation techniques he knew, using the various signs and subtle markings that he could observe. Piece by painstaking piece, he reconstructed his original course.

  For several tense hours, he crept through the whispering dark. His Grup beast crawled close at his heels, its fat body brushing against his ankles. It was weak, not much of a fighter. Sending it back to his soul sea would have been the prudent thing to do, conserving its energy. But Onyx couldn't bring himself to do so. Useless in a fight it may have been, its simple, anxious presence was the only thing that gave onyx even a semblance of safety, So he kept it out.

  Whether it was the concealing cloak of night, the thick layer of forest loam and dirt covering his scent, or simply his new, paranoid caution. His journey, miraculously, was completed without further peril.

  It was the deep, silent middle of the night when the trees finally thinned, revealing the cleared perimeter and the imposing walls of Grey Wood Station. Torchlight flickered on the palisade. A couple of guards standing by the reinforced gate were at instant, wary attention as a dark, stumbling figure emerged from the tree line.

  "Hold! Identify!" one barked, his voice sharp in the stillness. Weapons were raised. Beside them, the low growls of their beasts rumbled a warning.

  Onyx froze, raising his hands slowly. He was too exhausted to speak, his face a mask of dirt and dried sweat.

  The torchlight played over him. The guards squinted, their training overriding initial alarm. The shape resolved into human proportions—tattered clothes, no immediate weapons drawn, and trailing a small, muddy Grup.

  "Goodness... it's just a rookie," the other guard muttered, lowering his spear.

  Seeing Onyx's battered, exhausted figure beginning to sway, the two guards exchanged a quick glance and moved. They rushed forward, catching him just as his knees buckled. One took his arm over a shoulder, supporting his weight.

  "Easy now, rookie. You're safe. You're at the station," the first guard said, his voice now gruff with concern. "What in the realms happened to you?"

  The solidity of the station wall at his back, the firm grip of the guards, the sight of the secured gate—it all crashed into Onyx at once. The tension that had been a steel wire in his spine for hours finally snapped. He didn't answer, just sagged between them, a shudder of pure relief passing through him. Onyx was safe now.

  Several days later.

  Onyx sat on the edge of his bed in the quiet of his new room, a simple wooden bowl that had held his breakfast of porridge and dried fruit resting on the small table beside him. The room was modestly sized and furnished, containing all basic necessities but not much else. There was the bed, a trunk for his meager belongings, a washstand with a ceramic basin, and a single shelf carved into the stone wall. A narrow, high window let in a pale column of morning light, illuminating motes of dust in the still air. The walls were bare, the floor clean but worn. It was impersonal, a temporary shell, which was to be expected. As Onyx had only been living here for a couple of days.

  After he had recovered from his ordeal in the station’s infirmary, he had explained what happened to the local authorities and that was that. With the formalities over with, Onyx’s next practical step was to secure a residence. He wasn't planning on leaving Grey Wood Station anytime soon. Coming here to find less competition and a proper place to start from , had been his plan in the first place.

  Although Onyx was a bit shaken from his previous encounter, he had all but recovered by now. The sharp edge of terror had faded into a cautious respect for the wilderness beyond the walls. The memory of the chase was now a lesson, not a scar of fear.

  Once onyx finished the last of the water from his cup, he placed the bowl and cup on the small table, and stood. The room felt still and close. He then walked to the narrow window, its latch stiff from disuse, and pushed it open.

  A cool, fresh stream of morning air, carrying the faint, clean scent of dew and stone, flowed into the room. Onyx leaned on the sill, looking out at Grey Wood Station, his new home.

  The station sprawled out before him, a testament to hardened practicality. The buildings were mostly constructed of the local, pale grey stone, their structures squat, sturdy, and built to last. They clustered together along winding, unpaved streets that were hard-packed earth, darkened in patches from recent rain. The architecture was functional, with thick walls and slate roofs, utterly devoid of the sleek alloys and glowing synth-glass of Earth's cities.

  Most imposing of all were the station's walls. Massive palisades of sharpened, treated Greywood timber, reinforced with rammed earth and stone bastions, loomed in the distance, encircling the entire settlement and separating it from the vast, whispering forest beyond.

  And everywhere, there were the trees that gave the station its name. Greywood Trees stood in cultivated groves and lined the wider avenues. Their bark was smooth and pale as ash, but their leaves were a surprising vibrant, fiery orange that rustled softly with the breeze, a shock of warm color against the cool grey stone.

  Life pulsed through the streets below. People moved with purposeful energy. Most walked, carrying all sorts of tools and belongings. But what caught Onyx’s eye were the beasts. They were integrated into the very flow of traffic. A woman in sturdy leathers rode a sleek, antlered creature with cloven hooves that clicked on the stone. A man guided a massive, six-legged beast of burden, its back laden with sacks of grain. Here and there, wagons were being pulled not by engines, but by powerful, domesticated Catalyst Beasts with thick hides and patient demeanors.

  Onyx watched, and although he had been living here for some days already, he had yet to get used to the sight of it all. A strange, persistent feeling lingered in his chest. He couldn't shake the sensation that he had travelled back in time and was living in one of those ancient, pre-industrial kingdoms from humanity's distant past.

  It was an understandable feeling. After all onyx belonged to an advanced civilization with stuff like orbital habitats and neural interfaces. But here, in the outer realms, the stable laws of physics that allowed such technology were not a given. Many complex machines simply failed and Thier energy fields fluctuated. Out of necessity, human settlements had adapted, reverting to the timeless, sturdy structures and biomechanical systems of bygone eras. This station wasn't built like this because they lacked knowledge, but because stone, wood, and muscle were what worked in this realm.

  It was also why, only in places like this, would you find ancient professions and habits brought back to life. The rhythmic clang of a blacksmith’s hammer echoed from a nearby forge, a sound extinct on Earth for centuries. Farmers tended to small plots of alien tubers and grains inside the walls. Tanners, weavers, and carpenters plied their trades openly. These were hands-on crafts that had long been replaced by advanced fabricators and automated machinery back in the home world. Here, they were not relics, but vital pillars of survival.

  Onyx took a deep breath of the cool, unchanging air. This was his reality now. Not the future he was born into, but a necessary echo of the past, built on the edge of everything.